When performing work on a work piece, a frame or trestle may be used to support the work piece so that a user's hands are free to manipulate or finish the work piece. Further, the user need not constantly hold the work piece, which may be tiresome or, in the event the work piece is large or cumbersome.
Hence, traditional sawhorses were developed to help support the work piece. A typical sawhorse includes vertical legs nailed to a horizontal beam. Such a sawhorse is often fixedly assembled and usually entails being stored or moved in its completed form.
Hardware pieces are normally used for the legs to the beam to form the sawhorse. In the event the sawhorse is disassembled, there is usually no convenient way to keep these hardware pieces together and they may be misplaced.
Further developments may have been developed to make storage and transportation of sawhorses more convenient. U.S. Pat. No. 5,377,779 to Slapnicka appears to relate to a sawhorse having a horizontal beam that is removably attached to four legs that extend vertically from the horizontal beam. There seems to be four brace rods, each one connecting a midpoint of a leg to the horizontal beam. Because Slapnicka may entail attaching and detaching each leg and each brace rod each time the sawhorse is to be assembled and disassembled, the sawhorse in the disassembled state may involve multiple loose pieces, which may further involve increased time and complexity due to the quantity of pieces to arrange and the possibility of misplacing pieces that would need to be replaced. This problem may be exacerbated when a user misplaces the assembly or disassembly directions and has difficulty recalling such procedures.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,776,545 seems to relate to a stand for supporting a work piece. However, because the parts of the stand seem to require they be bolted together, the stand may not be easily or quickly assembled or disassembled. Further, similar to Slapnicka, missing parts, misplacing assembly or disassembly directions, and the user having difficulty recalling assembly or disassembly procedures may further increase time and complexity of assembling or disassembling the stand.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,268,020 to Wood seems to relate to a collapsible support device. However, because one side of the device seems to support a load differently than the other side of the device, the device may be unstable and/or inadequate.
In the area of boating, various types of shoring structures may have been devised and used for supporting boat hulls for dry dock storage and maintenance. Because of the wide variety of hull shapes, keels and boat sizes, these structures have generally been custom constructed at the maintenance or storage site for particular boats using basic timber elements, tie rods, and jack stands. Examples of such custom constructed stands are found in U.S. Pat. No. 3,139,277 to Mears and U.S. Pat. No. 4,756,642 to Quinn, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,759,660 to Corbett. These types of constructions may require that individual jack stands be placed about the boat hull and individually adjusted, with the addition of some cross supports between jack stands.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,468,150 to Price and U.S. Pat. No. 4,944,633 to Robb appears to provide cradle type supports which can accommodate boats of varying sizes by providing means for inwardly tilting jack stands mounted on a base structure. These types of cradles typically entail tensioning tie rods or other types of supports with multiple adjustments and fastenings. In addition, cradle type boat stands may rely on skewing the jack stands to accommodate hulls of varying widths and lengths. Skewed supports, however, are inherently less stable than vertical supports. Therefore, these types of stands may not provide sufficient stability nor be easy to store or move.
What is desired, therefore, is a foldable stand that is quick and easy to assemble and disassemble. What is also desired is a foldable stand that reduces or eliminates loose pieces or the complexity of assembling and disassembling the foldable stand. A further desire is a foldable stand that adequately and steadily supports a load placed on the stand.